Tenafly, NJ - Offering Eruv Settlement

Tenafly, NJ - Under a proposed settlement that could end a five-year legal battle, the Bergen County borough of Tenafly has reached an agreement with a group of Orthodox Jews that would allow a symbolic religious district that currently encloses a third of the town.
A public hearing on the matter is planed for tonight at 8:15 p.m.
The proposed settlement comes five years after the borough council at the time ordered the Tenafly Eruv Association to take down the plastic strips from utility poles in the public right-of-way, sparking a legal dispute.
A federal appeals court eventually ruled against the borough and divided residents of Tenafly, a town of 14,000. The court also noted that, while a borough ordinance barred private groups from attaching things to utility poles without permission, it was not enforced regularly. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case.

Under the proposed settlement, the borough would pay $325,000 in attorney fees to the Tenafly Eruv Association, the borough also would not be allowed to pursue related legal action against Verizon or Cablevision, which permitted the Jewish group to use utility poles, and it gives the association the ability to expand to whatever area of the town it thinks appropriate.

Bitter opposition to the eruv still persists in the four-square mile borough, Bill Saunders, a former councilman who has lived in Tenafly for 40 years, said he is considering moving out of the borough if the eruv expands.
"We are being obliged to live within an Orthodox Jewish town."

U/D: 01/11/06
Residents packed Borough Hall last night to support and object to a symbolic boundary, or eruv, sought by the borough's Orthodox Jewish community.
Emotions poured out during the public hearing, from both sides.

The council votes on the proposal in two weeks.